Hungry Hawk — Lucky doves

We had a nice and lazy Mother’s Day yesterday and because I was still getting over my loss of sleep from Friday, thought I’d take a little nap. I didn’t get to sleep, however, because shortly after lying down, I heard a bird call from the backyard I don’t hear a whole lot. I thought about what it could be, then remembered — oh yeah, blue jay.

Ok, so blue jays are not that exciting, but I figured I’d go take a look anyway. They are always fun to watch. I walked downstairs to the windows that overlook the back yard and was surprised to see a medium sized hawk with black stripes on its tail sitting on the top of our trampoline net. Then I saw, on the floor of the trampoline, three agitated mourning doves. They’d try to fly up to escape, and the hawk would dive at them, and then fly up to the opposite side of the trampoline. Whenever the hawk moved, a pair of blue jays would dive at the hawk, scolding all the while, from branches above the trampoline. This happened several times and I wondered if I should go save the doves because it looked dire for them. If my camera had been handy I would have snapped a photo or two or taken a movie, because this was so weird, but before I could grab my camera, the hawk flew away to another yard. I guess the blue jays were too much for it.

The mourning doves were either exhausted or too scared to fly well, because they couldn’t seem to fly out of the enclosure. Either that or they might need a longer runway to become airborne than the trampoline offered. Clare, Andrew and I went out and opened the flap of the trampoline net and the doves calmly walked out of the enclosure and flew away.